The promises of the Lord are exceedingly liberal and his invitations to men are enormously generous. He beckons because he is beneficent. Anyone who hears his offers are welcome to receive. He does not declare his favour in order to deceive. His outreach is earnest. As the celebrated 19th century Scottish preacher Thomas Guthrie so beguilingly puts it, “Mercy descends from heaven, lights upon itssummit, and preaches hope to despair, pardon to guilt, salvation to the lost. Free as the winds that fan her cheek, free as the sunbeams that shine on her golden tresses, she invites all to come, opens her arms to embrace the world, and in a voice that rings like a silver trumpet, cries ,’O, Earth, Earth, Earth, hear the word of the Lord’” (the Gospel in Ezekiel). There is no one who ought to be suspicious of the Lord or dubious as to his intentions or integrity. David is the medium of his own experiential assurance, “Taste and see that the Lord is good”. It is a statement of his own discovery and a call to his friends. It is a truth that he has proven. The knowledge of God is theological and intellectual (of the mind) but it is not complete and authentic until it is also affective (sensed and felt). Faith is objective but the truth it receives also stirs the emotions of love, confidence, and gratitude. Faith tests the word of God and subjectively the believer tastes the goodness of God. True, feelings are not trusted in any absolute way and faith weathers all conditions advantageous or adverse, but safe feelings accompany delight in the word. It is the source of feelings that is suspect. If the source is the Lord Jesus as he is presented in Holy Scripture then the sensibility is certified by the Holy Spirit who brings joy to the heart. In the company of Christ conversed with in the Bible our comforts are genuine. “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to mymouth” (Psalm 119:103). Human emotion in itself can be very fickle and unruly, but when ruled by the word and Spirit of God it is a key to authentic experience of God. It would be strange for a sincere believer to be utterly cold toward the facts of his Redeemer, and unmoved by his actions for us and within us. Christian realities are not merely notional but inevitably emotional. We see with the eye of the soul and sense with the excitement of the heart. The Lord teaches and touches. The spirit of man is animated by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. The knowledge of God is two dimensional through mind and heart and confirmed by actual experience – taste and the trial of divine faithfulness and favour throughout life. The danger in Christian spirituality is when either of these two elements becomes disproportional or when one is absent. When truth does not flow from the mind into the whole man it is in danger of becoming arrogant, critical, and hypocritical. Theology is technical expertise alone. When experience predominates as the criteria for authenticity and guidance there is the danger of fluctuation in a sense of spiritual wellbeing and an opening for any carnally gratifying fallacy in belief and flaw in behaviour. Scripture alone keeps us spiritually regulated. A preponderance of feeling and emotion can take us out of the way and seriously off course as is witnessed, of course, in the eccentricities of Count Zinzendorf and many others, good folk, who begin to indulge self induced whims and preferences and commend them as commands of God. Even the best of believers can develop quirks if they take “heart religion” to an extreme. We must never confuse our subjectivity with the thoughts and motions of the Holy Spirit. Prayer and constant humility are a way to discernment. The possible problem for Christians of intense feeling is that they come to a sense of monopoly on intimacy with God and insight into his will. Sensationalism in religion can threaten the godly state of a sound mind when Christians become fascinated with themselves and self congratulatory with the gifts which God has given them. One element of immaturity in Evangelicalism is over enthusiasm toward so called celebrities, whereas godly appreciation is a different matter. There is no star system among the people of God but rather many servants with differing capacities and callings. To “taste of the Lord” is an open invitation but it is meant to create an appetite for the Lord. To seek his goodness is to become a holy compulsion intended to foster our praise and admiration of him at all times. The enjoyment of God encourages heart felt adulation of his glorious perfection(s). It is not that our taste buds are merely sweetened, as they can be by so many things licit and illicit, it is that we sense God to be satisfyingly sweet in himself because of his wonderful attributes and intentions. Knowing God is ultimate and infinite pleasure which far surpasses any other, and indeed encompasses any other that is counted within his good creation, free of contamination and sin. In various places great Christians of all stripes and eras exhort a felt knowledge of Christ or describe the joys he personally imparts. Wesley, Grimshaw, Whitefield, Newton, Ryle all encourage believers to establish the genuineness of their profession with a sense of delight in God. Love is a word that has been sentimentalized and debased in the English language, but properly understood should not the gospel of love concerning the God of love and his kingdom of love, create an awareness of love and a response of love in the life of a believer? Do not lovers share a common feeling for and with each other? Should not the Lover of our soul make his presence and disposition warmly felt within the hearts of his people? Note the words found in Article 17: “The reverent consideration of ourpredestination and election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable strength and comfort to godly persons, who feel the working in themselves of the Spirit of Christ”. To taste is to experience and prove the goodness of something proffered to us. In the psalmist’s case it is to find sweetness and safety in what he consumes and digests. His commendation of God is a consumer’s report that is an enticement to others. Evangelism is not a technically contrived, formulaic operation with an obsession concerning success and statistics in which men glory. So often the victims of evangelistic programmes are viewed in the abstract as conquests and numbers to gloat over. Evangelism happens to be believers with Christ filled minds and souls seeking to see the joining of their fellows with God in whom they can find deliverance and delight. They approach others in terms of friendship, humility, love, and respect. The sects can outperform the church in proselytism and adding to membership numbers, but they cannot share or convey the sweetness of Christ, nor his just severity towards sin. They recruit “that they may boast aboutyour flesh”, observes Paul in addressing those subject to pressure alien to the truth and spirit of the gospel (Galatians 6:13). Christians may only boast about Christ because they have learned of him and tasted him. The gospel is a combination of realism and winsomeness, and the Lord Jesus is the winsome One. The Lord initiates and cultivates any desire for himself. But surely “taste and see” is a challenge to the sceptic also. Sceptics are supposedly adventurous and claim to be in pursuit of truth. But can they humble themselves for the most important experiment of their lives? Can they venture upon God with the plea, “Lord, show me”? They would be amazed at his mercy. Prejudice would give way to pleasure.RJS

from 'The Litany' “In all our time” is a haunting phrase. To say it is to ponder for a moment on the fact that we are creatures of time with a limited span of life. Our assumption is that we shall live long. We project the length of our existence far into the future and dismiss from thought the inevitability of our demise. In the back of minds we know that we will not live forever and yet in our reckoning there is a sense of indestructibility. We see others pass but assume that death will delay its appointment with us. Even when we are shaken by the departure of another there is a deep-down sense of personal security, the feeling that come what may we shall make it through. Its as if we have a hold on life and an entitlement to go on. We favour ourselves that somehow we are special and an exception to nature's routine. We can leave a graveside with the notion of mortality but quickly reassure ourselves with life's normal pattern, into which we shall soon resettle, and its familiarity will be our comfort. To think possessively of “our time” is a dubious claim. Time is God's and he apportions us a loan of an undisclosed measure of life in this world. He bestows and withdraws time according to his wisdom and pleasure. Between those two points we live in temporal uncertainty and all our plans are provisional. It becomes us to approach this fact with modesty. Men propose grandiose schemes and pursue great ambitions but they cannot estimate their outcome or endurance. Obituaries amply illustrate our limitations. All biographies finish with the letters QED. For good or ill God has determined, and will determine, for each life the place at which it shall be declared, “Quite enough done”. It will be a sudden interruption of our projects and expectations. Our church and culture need a dose of realism as to the transience of life and what is at stake for the eternal wellbeing of the soul. In spite of all the reminders we receive as to the seriousness of life and the gravity of death we tend to view things in a trivial fashion. The world is littered with toys and affords innumerable distractions, and preparation for death and eternity is inadequate. Life has become endless playtime. The church, especially, is blameworthy. We have no urgent gospel message because we have no real grasp of the essence of the divine revelation which is to join us to God before the severance becomes irreversible. Jesus has become everything or anything to anyone, apart from the Saviour from sin and death. He is a convenience, a lucky charm, a genie, a best buddy, a “cheerer-upper”, but not our Almighty and sovereign rescuer from an evil nature and a lost eternity. The Christian faith has almost lost its meaning and usefulness. We are entertainers to itching ears, the purveyors of a sick joke to a silly audience. We are no longer credible because we have frittered away our noble Christian heritage in an immature way. Anglicanism used to be a strong and flavoursome broth; now it is a bowl of lukewarm water without nourishment. Our forebears used to choose no. 1662 from the menu; now we don't even have a menu. Our people are famished and have no idea what they are missing.

The Litany is one of the provisions in our Prayer Book that braces us for the realities of this life and eternity. It banishes all illusions and urges us to place confidence in God alone. The Master of all things, Maker of time, and source of all mercy, is our only safety and hope in life and death. His continual deliverance is our constant necessity. In all time, as it is allotted to us, we stand in absolute need of him and cannot afford to forget him. We shall need to call upon him in our time of tribulation. Troubles in this world are certain and unavoidable for believers and unbelievers. In many ways they are the norm of our existence, slight or serious. Suppression of this fact is not successful. Ways of escape and denial are not effective. Tribulation assails us, or we are discomforted by the sight of affliction in the lives of others. Happiness in any genuine sense is precarious. We need deliverance from the evils of life and our selves. Every life story has its painful chapters. Blues and laments are common to every culture. Suffering to some extent spreads its pall over every life and it is naïve to think otherwise. Anglicanism is all about religious realism and it points us to the Good Lord for deliverance and consolation. Contemporary humanism is bleak and all together blank when it comes to a solution. Superficial religion is a raft of straw when the waters roll and the waves crash. Western religion is, in the main, flippant and fallacious. In the time of our wealth and wellbeing we especially need to call upon God. Good fortune makes us forgetful of him. Wealth makes us self-congratulatory, self-important, superior, and insufferable. Health makes us hearty, hopeful, and enterprising. Favourable circumstances bewitch us with false security and assumption of permanent affluence and ready alertness, agility, and ability. But life changes unpredictably, and sometimes so suddenly. The author of Ecclesiastes exhorts us to enjoyment and gratitude in the good things of life but also to careful remembrance of God. He alone is solid, unchanging, and dependable. In all our times prosperity is possibly the most dangerous. In the hour of death, for it will come, that specific and very solitary moment that no-one shares with us personally, our hearts cry out to and for God. Brief life is over and we are summoned to our Maker for an individual account of our time on earth. There may be short opportunity for review but not for revision. In that dark instant of our passing we shall need a Deliverer if we are to pass to the radiance of heaven. All will be revealed in the glare of his penetrating scrutiny of the soul. Every clock or timepiece we have ever seen will strike its disapproval of our waste of precious time to know the Lord as thoroughly and joyfully as we ought. We shall need his acknowledgement that we are, after all, his in Jesus Christ. “Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes”. In the Day of Judgement we shall most definitely need the deliverance of the Lord. We shall need our Justifier to declare that we are right before the Judge. We shall need our Sanctifier to certify that we are fit for fellowship with God. We shall need our Saviour-King to point us to the right-hand side of his throne. We shall need his kindly smile accompanied by his warm word of welcome, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this” (revelation 4:1). What rapture!RJSBlaise Pascal is good reading for a grasp of these serious matters.